Google builds WebM patent pool of its own to fight back against MPEG-LA

In an effort to allay fears over the patent status of its WebM video format, …

Taking a leaf from MPEG-LA's playbook, Google has announced the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative, a consortium of companies that agree to share any patents that those companies may hold that are relevant to the WebM video format, and in particular the VP8 video compression algorithm. True to Google's ambitions for the format, the shared patents are all available on a royalty-free basis, both to consortium members and anyone else that wants to implement WebM.

Since the launch of WebM, Google has positioned itself as the only company with relevant patents. Though the company is still not acknowledging that any third parties might have any patent claims, creating this community means that even if such claims emerge at a later date, then, as long as those claims are made by community members, they pose no risk to WebM users.

In creating this community, Google is acting in a manner similar to MPEG-LA, the organization that handles licensing for competing video codec H.264. MPEG-LA forms patent pools where groups of related patents that are jointly licensed together, in a convenient package, with the aim of giving would-be implementors of a particular technology a one-stop shop to obtain all the intellectual property rights they need. MPEG-LA's agreements also include certain conditions that protect licensees; if a company with patents in the pool discovers that it has additional patents that cover the technology, licensees need not worry: their licenses will cover the use of these patents too.

The major difference between the two is that MPEG-LA charges for use of its patent pools in many, but not every, scenario, whereas the WebM Community Cross-License Initiative will not charge in any way, ever.

The move will serve to better assure would-be implementors of WebM technology that it will not open them up to legal liability. Lawsuit-magnet Microsoft, in particular, has raised a number of questions about the patent risk surrounding WebM, and is unlikely to integrate support for the standard until the concerns are resolved to its satisfaction (though it's happy for Google to take the risk). Creating a consortium of companies bound by a promise to offer any relevant patents they may own on a royalty-free basis, even without identifying what those patents may be, is a positive step by Google to diminish that risk.

The exact terms of the cross-license agreement have not been decided. The intent is to create an agreement that essentially extends Google's existing VP8 patent grants to all the community members: they will each offer a royalty-free license to use their patents, subject to the condition that community members not sue each other. If any community member sues any other for any patent related to WebM then the suing community member wil lose its rights to use any of the other WebM Patents.

Update: A Matroska developer has informed us that although the terms on the site are described only as a "summary", they are in fact the full and final document that was signed.

Including Google itself, there are currently 17 companies in the WebM Community, representing a range of interests. Browser developers Opera and Mozilla are both members, as is consumer electronics giant LG Electronics, along with semiconductor supremos Samsung and Texas Instruments. Notable absences from the community include Microsoft and Apple.

Indeed, compared to the list of companies with patents in the H.264 patent pool—the companies perhaps most likely to have patents covering WebM—and the lack of overlap is significant. Cisco, LG, and Samsung are members of both groups, but there are 26 other companies in the H.264 patent pool that have not yet joined the WebM initiative. These companies all have a vested interest in defending H.264's royalty payments, and their absence will leave some doubts over the significance of the consortium.

MPEG-LA is not standing still either. In February, the company announced a call for the submission of WebM patents, with a view to forming a patent pool of its own. That initial call ended last month, and though the group has been quiet since that announcement, a statement given to The H said that patents had been submitted for inclusion in the pool, and that the pool-creation process was continuing. The next step for MPEG-LA will be to assess the submitted patents to determine if they are essential to VP8; if they are, a pool will be formed.

Does this means that in the 1 year period there is much improvement, at least in video conferencing application?

Frankly I can barely even bother to look at yet another comparison when it's adequately clear what the fundamental differences are in techniques, but I will say that video conference has real-time requires that change the dynamics. Ie if you don't have the time, you cannot use the advanced techniques in h.264.

Also note that Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote detailed notes on his analysis of the codec. This is a guy who writes the best encoder on the market and whose first trivial attempt at vp8 outran the entire On2 effect, so I would place some weight on his opinion. The techniques/algorithms are all also public documented, if you are so inclined.

Quote:

But this does add the other dimension to this discussion, which is time.

1. Surely we can not assume that the codec quality will stay the same at all time. More so when it is open sourced in 2010 and we already see improvement more or less 1 year later.

There are fundamental differences in feature sets. Vp8 is basically low level h.264, period. There's no way to change this.

Quote:

2. Should freedom be sacrificed because a pattern encumbered codec have a good quality and performance now when that freedom will actually result to the same good quality later in about 1 year time period?

Pardon me for using the word freedom. Such a big word without properly scoping it.

I'm using the word freedom as in freedom to do whatever I want and as I see fit with the technology without any restriction (legally or dollar wise or whatever other wise it may be). For instance if I decide to make an improved codec based on the technology specific source code to use it in house or even commercially.

1. I would love to do it without any possibility of legal harrasment from any person or entity.

2. If the codec is then embedded in device that produce video. There should be no reason for me to include a clause that limit the device for personal use only and thus limit the device owner freedom (there is a funny article somewhere about someone finding professional Camera actually come built in with non professional codec!) .

3. If the codec is then used by me or other people to encode video and later distribute the video for personal or commercial purpose. I would love very much to have freedom to do it without any restriction whatsoever, be it legal or monetary restriction. And without any reason that may cause the viewer to lost their freedom to view it using whatever machine, software or operating system, due to legal or monetary description (*worst case scenario* if some kids want to solder their own machine without using any licensed hardware encoder chip and then later decide to hand code their own OS and software stack and then want to view that video. It is their freedom to do so!)

4. Must be able to exercise that freedom 5 years later (or how many much years later) without having to worry any person or any entity change their mind or change their licensing term.

I hope that is clear enough about what kind of freedom I am talking about. There is no need to accuse me of

"employing empty political rhetoric like "freedom" except the disdain of people who actually understand the issues at play."

You be nice to me, I will be nice to you, I promise . Please let me know if you don't think that I or other people in this discussion did not deserve any of the above freedom. Be clear with the reason so that we all can reflect and discuss it (like adult?).

The lay of the landscape is basically this: h.264 is 100% certain to stay in HW. Everybody already pays for it there and nobody is going to drop it and lose compatibility over a few cents when whole dollars of profit are on the line. They designed the codec and now they're using it, it's a done deal.

Google believes that they have a chance at getting vp8 into web video. They do have some cards to play in that regard since they own the largest video sharing site on the web. Note this has nothing to do with "freedom" or such bullshit, it's a power play by Google and as much as some like to cast them as heroes, they're run by agents for shareholders looking out for their own interests just like very other publicly traded company. This fiduciary responsibility from the top is in fact required by law in the US.

What's not really discussed is that competing standards carries with it a burden for all involved, which is the whole point of standardization: reducing costs. Now everyone must either choose one standard and risk losing compatibility or choose all and pay dev/test/storage/whatever costs multiple times. Given that h.264 is already well established, it's a selfish play by Google to place all those costs on everyone else to give themselves a slim chance at establishing dominance. IMO that window's long closed anyway since the days MS tried to do it with VC-1 (for free, btw, and likely none of the suspect types here supported it because they're the type you have to buy off with hollow promises like goog does).

Again, this is a complete rehash of what was already typed endless times from endless angles in the prior thread.

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

The problem with video and codecs most of the known better ways to do the necessary steps are patented(better as in high performance and higher quality).

Its nothing to do with what we or any one deserves, its the way the current system works, sort of derives from people wanting to get paid for their work and most people aren't lucky enough to get paid to work on open source software or have the free time.

I'm pretty sure you can add webm support into the elphel cameras(fpga based) http://www.elphel.comand there are a couple of consumer security/monitoring cameras that use webm already.

note it appears the playbook doesn't support webm out of the box h264, flash or wmv

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

Again, given the blatant dishonesty in the addition to the prior lack of good faith on your part, I'm not sure why you feel anyone will take you seriously.

The problem with video and codecs most of the known better ways to do the necessary steps are patented(better as in high performance and higher quality).

Are you contending that these are current patents, with no prior art (say from the development of information theory) that entirely preclude the possibility of a royalty free standard encoding for web video ever being developed? That sort of statement from the MPEG LA has so far resulted in very little evidence.

alxx wrote:

Its nothing to do with what we or any one deserves, its the way the current system works, sort of derives from people wanting to get paid for their work and most people aren't lucky enough to get paid to work on open source software or have the free time.

Many people have and continue to work for government in research of such areas. From my experience of reading about technology history, in the world of technical innovation it's pretty hard to throw a rock in the air and not land on a university or government funded originator.

alxx wrote:

I'm pretty sure you can add webm support into the elphel cameras(fpga based) http://www.elphel.comand there are a couple of consumer security/monitoring cameras that use webm already.

note it appears the playbook doesn't support webm out of the box h264, flash or wmv

I did notice no webM support on the PB also, this is a shame as should it prove possible to enable webM there, it could prove a decent test ground for mobile use cases of both web video encoding formats?

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

Again, given the blatant dishonesty in the addition to the prior lack of good faith on your part, I'm not sure why you feel anyone will take you seriously.

I did notice no webM support on the PB also, this is a shame as should it prove possible to enable webM there, it could prove a decent test ground for mobile use cases of both web video encoding formats?

Apparently they didn't feel like the burden Google tried to place on everyone else was worth it. I'm sure the ideologues will find someone to blame for hating freedom.

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

Again, given the blatant dishonesty in the addition to the prior lack of good faith on your part, I'm not sure why you feel anyone will take you seriously.

If it is blatant, can you show my dishonesty off here?

Is a link to the prior thread where a comparison was painstakingly explained to you sufficient? And by sufficient I mean you'll cop to lying instead of conveniently changing the subject or waiting for the next thread to pop back up to play the same game again.

I did notice no webM support on the PB also, this is a shame as should it prove possible to enable webM there, it could prove a decent test ground for mobile use cases of both web video encoding formats?

Apparently they didn't feel like the burden Google tried to place on everyone else was worth it. I'm sure the ideologues will find someone to blame for hating freedom.

The more you post your view that all other commentators are capable only of polarised viewpoints; the more peerless in discussion you appear to me :-)

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

Again, given the blatant dishonesty in the addition to the prior lack of good faith on your part, I'm not sure why you feel anyone will take you seriously.

If it is blatant, can you show my dishonesty off here?

Is a link to the prior thread where a comparison was painstakingly explained to you sufficient? And by sufficient I mean you'll cop to lying instead of conveniently changing the subject or waiting for the next thread to pop back up to play the same game again.

So rather than address what I think in the context of this discussion are valid, important and concise questions on this topic, you are looking to go back to a previous thread to support some form of ad hominem?

By the way will they be the threads where you proved to be factually inaccurate about directshow as agreed by our very own DrPizza, or the one where your misapplication of Amdahls law and ignorance of mobile device costs were shown?

I did notice no webM support on the PB also, this is a shame as should it prove possible to enable webM there, it could prove a decent test ground for mobile use cases of both web video encoding formats?

Apparently they didn't feel like the burden Google tried to place on everyone else was worth it. I'm sure the ideologues will find someone to blame for hating freedom.

The more you post your view that all other commentators are capable only of polarised viewpoints; the more peerless in discussion you appear to me :-)

Don't insult other commentators by associating them with you. If the comments above are any indicator, most here are sick and tired of the kind of behavior you and hal exhibit. The worst part of it is that it seems to come so easily.

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

Again, given the blatant dishonesty in the addition to the prior lack of good faith on your part, I'm not sure why you feel anyone will take you seriously.

If it is blatant, can you show my dishonesty off here?

Is a link to the prior thread where a comparison was painstakingly explained to you sufficient? And by sufficient I mean you'll cop to lying instead of conveniently changing the subject or waiting for the next thread to pop back up to play the same game again.

So rather than address what I think in the context of this discussion are valid, important and concise questions on this topic, you are looking to go back to a previous thread to support some form of ad hominem?

By the way will they be the threads where you proved to be factually inaccurate about directshow as agreed by our very own DrPizza, or the one where your misapplication of Amdahls law and ignorance of mobile device costs were shown?

Is a link to the prior thread where a comparison was painstakingly explained to you sufficient? And by sufficient I mean you'll cop to lying instead of conveniently changing the subject or waiting for the next thread to pop back up to play the same game again.

That's rich ... the links you gave are a year out of date. WebM has been twice upgraded since then, and you are trying to use results which are well shy (about 13% shy) of current WebM performance to try to indicate that someone else is being dishonest? Really? Do you really think you would get away with that?

You are a shyster, through and through. All you ever do is jump on to threads late, after Dr Pizza is shown to be wrong or have no answer, and thrash rudely about and try your best to insult everybody.

For example, in this thread, this was the post where DrPizza had no answer, and thereafter you showed up and started insulting everyone:http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/04 ... t-21581953You don't address the point. The point is that if this hypothetical patent holder sold this hypothetical patent that allegedly read upon WebM to Google, then they would make some money out of it. If instead they put this hypothetical patent into the postulated MPEG LA patent pool for WebM, then WebM would be no better than H264, and due to lack of adoption of WebM the hypothetical patent holder would see no returns whatsoever from their patent.

This point never was addressed. The debating tricks you are apparently using are called "deflection" and "ad hominem".

The tactic seems to be to try to make it so that no-one notices the crux point made (the point to which you/DrPizza have no answer).

This is a recurring pattern in all of these discussions. I think you are just another account of DrPizza's.

Odd (but not petulant) that you don't have time to read the research, it mentions SSIM and everything.Google this MS that.

You do realise the Free in these cases is actually about being Freely shared adapted and used, independent of the originator/creator. I.E. It doesn't matter who/how or where it comes from any more, it is Free!

Why anyone cares about the provenance being google/ms or virtually any other entity is beyond me.

Again, given the blatant dishonesty in the addition to the prior lack of good faith on your part, I'm not sure why you feel anyone will take you seriously.

If it is blatant, can you show my dishonesty off here?

Is a link to the prior thread where a comparison was painstakingly explained to you sufficient? And by sufficient I mean you'll cop to lying instead of conveniently changing the subject or waiting for the next thread to pop back up to play the same game again.

So rather than address what I think in the context of this discussion are valid, important and concise questions on this topic, you are looking to go back to a previous thread to support some form of ad hominem?

By the way will they be the threads where you proved to be factually inaccurate about directshow as agreed by our very own DrPizza, or the one where your misapplication of Amdahls law and ignorance of mobile device costs were shown?

As predicted, changing the subject and more lies on cue.

I agree, lets avoid changing the subject: Which was to DrPizza regarding the W3C and IETF positions on patented tech for related formats and encoding schemes used in the past.

The problem with video and codecs most of the known better ways to do the necessary steps are patented(better as in high performance and higher quality).

Are you contending that these are current patents, with no prior art (say from the development of information theory) that entirely preclude the possibility of a royalty free standard encoding for web video ever being developed? That sort of statement from the MPEG LA has so far resulted in very little evidence.

I'm not contending either way. I have no idea on the patents/pior art.With video there are certain operations you always need to do.The patents should or be soon expiring if they haven't already.

There only so many ways to skin a cat with current computer architecturesi.e only so many ways to do various video operations.

Just encoding ? or encoding and decoding ?

Quote:

alxx wrote:

Its nothing to do with what we or any one deserves, its the way the current system works, sort of derives from people wanting to get paid for their work and most people aren't lucky enough to get paid to work on open source software or have the free time.

Many people have and continue to work for government in research of such areas. From my experience of reading about technology history, in the world of technical innovation it's pretty hard to throw a rock in the air and not land on a university or government funded originator.

But these days most uni's go for patents and try to commercialise their work (if the work is good enough)same with government/research agencies - see Australian CSIRO and its wifi patents.

Then again the government grant thats kept most of the office I'm in employed sort of stipulated a bsd license (it didn't allow gpl/lgpl).My work on that project is also under bsd license (hardware and software)

On a different project all the software is under a bsd license but the ip is corporate ownedand the code most likely won't be released(corporate funded project)

For video a lot of the network and security video companies have only switched to H264 in the last 3- 4 years, quite a lot still offer mjpeg

Also note that Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote detailed notes on his analysis of the codec. This is a guy who writes the best encoder on the market and whose first trivial attempt at vp8 outran the entire On2 effect, so I would place some weight on his opinion. The techniques/algorithms are all also public documented, if you are so inclined.

Then we should wait for his (or other with similar credential) opinion on the current WebM/VP8 with the same level of detail? You have to admit, it is not fair to base judgment on VP8 at the point of time when it was just released to the open source community. As far as I am concern, we have no objective data in the matter of H.264/x264 vs WebM/VP8 **now**.

Does sounds like all the argument in this thread and the previous thread are invalid to me if it is done with respect to last year test done on a codec at its infancy stage.

tzt wrote:

There are fundamental differences in feature sets. Vp8 is basically low level h.264, period. There's no way to change this.

And this VP8 you are writing about. Is it the current VP8 or the last year VP8?

tzt wrote:

The lay of the landscape is basically this: h.264 is 100% certain to stay in HW. Everybody already pays for it there and nobody is going to drop it and lose compatibility over a few cents when whole dollars of profit are on the line. They designed the codec and now they're using it, it's a done deal.

Google believes that they have a chance at getting vp8 into web video. They do have some cards to play in that regard since they own the largest video sharing site on the web. Note this has nothing to do with "freedom" or such bullshit, it's a power play by Google and as much as some like to cast them as heroes, they're run by agents for shareholders looking out for their own interests just like very other publicly traded company. This fiduciary responsibility from the top is in fact required by law in the US.

What's not really discussed is that competing standards carries with it a burden for all involved, which is the whole point of standardization: reducing costs. Now everyone must either choose one standard and risk losing compatibility or choose all and pay dev/test/storage/whatever costs multiple times. Given that h.264 is already well established, it's a selfish play by Google to place all those costs on everyone else to give themselves a slim chance at establishing dominance. IMO that window's long closed anyway since the days MS tried to do it with VC-1 (for free, btw, and likely none of the suspect types here supported it because they're the type you have to buy off with hollow promises like goog does).

Again, this is a complete rehash of what was already typed endless times from endless angles in the prior thread.

I can understand your frustration with the whole thing. You have passionately describe WebM as something that might consume more battery since *now* hardware are optimized for H.264 more than WebM. In addition to this understood your point of view that the whole exercise derail the standardization process because now there is 2 standard!

But may I suggest that you understand other people frustration with H.264 and whythey might see WebM as a solution or alternative when it come to level of openness (i.e. open standard vs open source or patented with $$$ licensing requirement vs patent unencumbered free for all BSD style).

Part of the understanding is to realize that this is not an ideology or political agenda. People just want to use stuff and do stuff without having to worry about being restricted *IF THERE IS ALTERNATIVE*.

Sure, you can brand Google as exercising power play and having their own agenda to the tune of shareholders to get profit etc. (As anyone else can brand MPEG-LA, Microsoft, Apple the same).

But if it is just up to Google alone, none of this going to happen. YouTube can use WebM as it is Google prerogative to make it so. But WebM itself is welcomed by the community because it fills a need and it has its own merit. Believe it or not, the merit does not have to be quality or performance. In this case, it is "freedom" (refer to my previous post for my attempt to clarify this such big words!).

Being BSD also implies that the community will have some form of control on the technology and not just everything Google.So, the situation is not as bleak as per your writings above.

As for having 2 competing standard. This is not the first time and will not be the last. Chill and accept it as the fact of life. The competing standard will sort themselves. The beauty is that, at the end of this "sorting" process something better will emerge. Why something better? Because to gain traction it has to be chosen and actively used by the people. Just look at it as a voting process involving everyone Instead of just MPEG-LA, Google, Apple or Microsoft.

Nothing precludes the possibility its just reasonably unlikely.Just encoding ? or encoding and decoding ?

Did you forget the words, in your opinion?

Encoding or encoding and decoding? I'm not sure, why do you ask?I'd suggest the ietf/w3c would primarily hope to, develop and promote standard formats and/or encodings of web/internet data, but you may have a point, they (especially ietf) probably would like to promote non proprietary methods for the decoding of such formats.

alxx wrote:

Quote:

Many people have and continue to work for government in research of such areas. From my experience of reading about technology history, in the world of technical innovation it's pretty hard to throw a rock in the air and not land on a university or government funded originator.

But these days most uni's go for patents and try to commercialise their work (if the work is good enough)same with government/research agencies - see Australian CSIRO and its wifi patents.

Then again the government grant thats kept most of the office I'm in employed sort of stipulated a bsd license (it didn't allow gpl/lgpl).My work on that project is also under bsd license (hardware and software) but probably won't be released (not my decision).

On a different project all the software is bsd license but the ip is corporate ownedand again the code most likely won't be released(corporate funded project)

Have you got data to back up that state funded research is (and/or has been) in the majority preventing free and open innovation through patents or commercialisation.

Personally I'd find it worrying if tax payers money was being used to develop science that was commercialised or used in such a way as to not benefit the original stake holders (the tax payer/society)

I believe Tim Berners Lee and many others have address the potential issue of such an approach to science through the Science Commons and open access initiatives. My perception is your description of Computer Science research is far from the case here in the UK. Check out Southampton universities computer research department output for example.

stewski I was in the middle of editing that. Missed IMNSHO(I need to post fully the first time and not go back and edit)

Might not be the case in the UK but it certainly is here in Australia especially with the cuts to funding under the previous government and way grants are being given by the current government.

Free and fully open research unfortunately doesn't always get you enough dollars to keep goingor keep food on the table.

All the uni's here have commericalisation offices that try to sell the uni's ip to companies (as much as possible) to try and generate revenue , including going back through older research and thesis to try and find ip of interest to companies. Some of the biggest buyers are the multinationals and oil/mining companies. Have to remember we're in a mining/resources boom here and if its slightly related to that sector the companies are pretty fast to buy it up.

Most unis here depend on international students to pay the bills. Ranges from 30 to 60% international students out of the total student body depending on uni.

You guys will see changes with the recent big UK funding cuts.

harishashimGoogle has a duty to its shareholders(as do all other for profit companies) to make the maximum profit it can. Its called capitalism.

In this case we don't know either way until the two competing standards are tested in court and a decision is made whether one infringes on patents or not.

For video something better (technically) is emerging HEVC/h265.Supposedly better quality than H264 and half the bandwidth.

Is a link to the prior thread where a comparison was painstakingly explained to you sufficient? And by sufficient I mean you'll cop to lying instead of conveniently changing the subject or waiting for the next thread to pop back up to play the same game again.

That's rich ... the links you gave are a year out of date. WebM has been twice upgraded since then, and you are trying to use results which are well shy (about 13% shy) of current WebM performance to try to indicate that someone else is being dishonest? Really? Do you really think you would get away with that?

Again, this was a comprehensive study of which there there will be one in 2011, but you knew that.

Also, I recall it was shown you can't calculate ratios correctly in the past thread (usually by adding them straight up, lol), but predictably it's back to old habits again. Don't worry though, everyone already sees right through it.

Quote:

You are a shyster, through and through. All you ever do is jump on to threads late, after Dr Pizza is shown to be wrong or have no answer, and thrash rudely about and try your best to insult everybody.

No, I don't insult you. Your own behavior insults you. Notice that when you try tit-for-tat retorts, they don't make any sense, but in their original form it's self-evident.

Quote:

For example, in this thread, this was the post where DrPizza had no answer, and thereafter you showed up and started insulting everyone:http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/04 ... t-21581953You don't address the point. The point is that if this hypothetical patent holder sold this hypothetical patent that allegedly read upon WebM to Google, then they would make some money out of it. If instead they put this hypothetical patent into the postulated MPEG LA patent pool for WebM, then WebM would be no better than H264, and due to lack of adoption of WebM the hypothetical patent holder would see no returns whatsoever from their patent.

This point never was addressed. The debating tricks you are apparently using are called "deflection" and "ad hominem".

I have no idea why you're blaming me for something you've already attributed to Pizza.

Also, acting the way you is not the manner to invite people take your questions seriously.

Quote:

The tactic seems to be to try to make it so that no-one notices the crux point made (the point to which you/DrPizza have no answer).

This is a recurring pattern in all of these discussions. I think you are just another account of DrPizza's.

Is this an accusation which you're willing to take accountability for, or another throwaway fib as seen from your friend stewski?

The problem with video and codecs most of the known better ways to do the necessary steps are patented(better as in high performance and higher quality).

Its nothing to do with what we or any one deserves, its the way the current system works, sort of derives from people wanting to get paid for their work and most people aren't lucky enough to get paid to work on open source software or have the free time.

You are sure right about most of the best way of doing things is patented.

But this does not means that everyone should just stop trying.

Otherwise the risk of "most" being patented might become "all" being patented. And no way to move forward at all.

In this matter, Google effort with WebM deserve an applause. They use their own money and upfront the engineers to do the work before making it open source.

I do remember a time when Theora is the open source video codec alternative and then come VP8. Believe it or not, progress is happening.

It does sounds like now is a much happier time. There is more chance to improve or discover new patent and make it open source. Hence negating the situation arising from doing nothing that result to no way to move forward through the patent land mines.

alxx wrote:

Its nothing to do with what we or any one deserves, its the way the current system works, sort of derives from people wanting to get paid for their work and most people aren't lucky enough to get paid to work on open source software or have the free time.

And it should continue to work as such. Have Linux as open source project deprive any programmer on Windows or Macintosh to make their living? It does empower other different sort of programmer to innovate and do different things. For instance, instead of ASP.Net programmer we also have PHP web programmer. May I suggest that if everyone is ASP.Net programmer then everyone will be fighting with everyone for work opportunity. The end result will be much worst, yes?

Unacceptable appears a strong word to attribute to the ietf/w3c positions. Rather than entirely unacceptable I'd say perhaps in the past especially around networking and interoperation a technology has been used and standardised around that is non free patented/licensed, those bodies have observed difficulty particularly in developing and improving the standards they promote.

But is that relevant? I think it's perfectly reasonable for W3C to treat video codecs as a black box, just as they do with network protocols and many other things. So what if W3C can't develop video codec standards? That's no loss; it's not their area of expertise anyway. I don't think it's IETF's area of expertise either, though writing a specification for the wire format is probably something they can handle.

The fact that IETF and W3C can't develop or improve video standards is not a consequence of patents--ISO MPEG and ITU both manage to do it just fine, after all. It's a consequence of their different expertise.

stewski wrote:

See above but rather than ask me you'd do better to ask the inventor of the web, or the body that recommends standards for the web, or the bodies that have promoted the internet. Perhaps there is a clearer discussion on why they choose to avoid proprietary licensed technology when developing standards on the respective websites?

I don't care about "the inventor of the Web". He's not putting a case on these message boards. Similarly whatever arguments they make on their Web sites; I'm not going to argue against a Web page. You're making the case, it is up to you to defend it.

stewski wrote:

In what way, I'm trying to follow a rational consideration of how the internet and web have become such useful technologies to mankind, why the bodies involved have avoided licensed proprietary technology and understand why your position is that in the case of video it will "work better" if we don't follow the route those organisations have suggested before?

Let's just look at that route for a moment, shall we?

H.264, the open-but-royalty-encumbered standard, has a test suite, reference implementation, and extensive documentation. There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of implementations in the wild, and their interoperability is near-perfect. I'm sure there are corner cases where encoder X can produce a perfectly legal and valid bitstream that encoder Y can't handle for one reason or another, but these events are very much the exception, not the rule. The level of real-world interoperability and compatibility is incredible.

HTML and CSS, the open-and-royalty-free specifications, have incomplete test suites, no viable reference implementations, and reasonably extensive documentation. There are perhaps a dozen important implementations (plus god knows how many incomplete/half-assed implementations), and real-world interoperability and compatibility between them is extremely poor. Partly due to vendor incompleteness, partly due to documentation inadequacy, partly due to bugs. They simply don't work the same way, and don't produce the same output.

I only wish that HTML and CSS were adopted as well and as consistently as H.264. The Web would be a much better place for it. But it's simply not the case. The notion that H.264's royalties serve as a serious, meaningful impediment to widespread adoption--highly effective adoption--is simply not true in practice. Even if you wish to restrict the scope to Web video it isn't true, as YouTube, Flash, and iOS demonstrate.

I think their concern about the impact of non-royalty-free standards is entirely hypothetical, and not borne out in practice.

For example, in this thread, this was the post where DrPizza had no answer, and thereafter you showed up and started insulting everyone:http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/04 ... t-21581953You don't address the point. The point is that if this hypothetical patent holder sold this hypothetical patent that allegedly read upon WebM to Google, then they would make some money out of it. If instead they put this hypothetical patent into the postulated MPEG LA patent pool for WebM, then WebM would be no better than H264, and due to lack of adoption of WebM the hypothetical patent holder would see no returns whatsoever from their patent.

This point never was addressed. The debating tricks you are apparently using are called "deflection" and "ad hominem".

What is there to address? What you claim is only true if you believe that VP8 has no merits of its own; if its only value is that it's royalty-free, and that as soon as it has any royalty, no matter what the price, people would revert back to H.264 (if they aren't using it already).

I don't hold VP8 in such low esteem as you apparently do. I think it would still have value as a cheaper (and somewhat inferior, especially when H.264 is used with its most complex profiles) alternative to H.264. If nothing else, it would serve as a strong incentive to keep H.264 pricing to reasonable levels, something that the VP8 proponents seem almost paranoid about--regularly we hear concerns that they could raise H.264 prices so high that they would drive YouTube out of business, for example. Cheap VP8 prevents that just as effectively as free VP8 does.

Free and fully open research unfortunately doesn't always get you enough dollars to keep goingor keep food on the table.

The research wasn't and/or isn't free, the tax payer paid for it, as with our ordnance survey and government data the data set and intellectual property should be (and more recently have been) opened and available to the original stakeholders.

Although cuts in RnD are an issue, it is not apparent that the suggestion you made that related IP from research by state funded computer science is likely to present a landscape where WebM is impossible without infringement is true.

Is it not likely that Google and any other legal entity encoding and distributing video based on WebM could be found to infringe MPEG LA patented methods if these claims were true?

As you ably point out, Google is a business, so they would be putting themselves at great risk if they weren't convinced that statements such as your and Mpeg LAs were in fact false?

By the way on the supposed only financial restrictions of h.264, what happens when people don't pay a license or a fine etc? The restrictions on patented technology are legal and can be enforced by a court of law!

In this case we don't know either way until the two competing standards are tested in court and a decision is made whether one infringes on patents or not.

Sure, if that is the determining factor on what will emerge out of the 2 competing standard. So be it. I am not in anyway contesting that point. But that sword can go both ways. As per my earlier post let's all just take this wait and see attitude.

alxx wrote:

For video something better (technically) is emerging HEVC/h265.Supposedly better quality than H264 and half the bandwidth.

Great! I am going to start writing emails to MPEG-LA and hope that my great skill of persuasion will open up their heart to make it **available** under any of the open source licensed. The best is BSD.

Let's all hold hand and pray that by the time it is released we can described it as ... drum rolls ...

"Better quality than H264, half the bandwidth, BSD licensed and patent unencumbered free for all fest!"

How many times did I write the word license? Not their cover page. There is no downstream license given in the LICENSE. They may write whatever they want on their front page, the only legal part is the LICENSE part.And they expand on the third point in the Issues to be aware of, by the way. It's like in the new SouthPark cartoon - no one reads the damn EULA and will get in trouble for that.

That's not the argument that you originally offered nor the one I've refuted. You said it was illegal to distribute the mp3 codec which is plainly not true. That you've since changed your statement isn't my concern.

jalexoid wrote:

I would love to see when and out of which income *BSD and a lot of Linux distributions paid MPEG-LA for the codec distribution license... You know that it's still illegal to distribute an MP3 decoder?

Quoted for you in case you forgot what you stated.

And again I ask you what the difference is if the upstream provider (Fluendo) can provide the same functionality directly? The codec is available and usable, so are you just upset that you can't relicense someone else's software to GPL?

jalexoid wrote:

Invid wrote:

jalexoid wrote:

And what is if the codec is not there? And guess what? They can't bundle the codec in that...

If the codec's not there you fall back to flash, just like today.

So... Most FreeBSD users are screwed.

FreeBSD users can use the Linux binary if they live in a country bound by software patent observance, and can recompile otherwise. Do some research.

Lastly, this diversion is irrelevant anyway. Mozilla is not my OS vendor, so it's none of their business what the state of my license compliance may be. They should use the codecs provided by the system and to the best of my knowledge, and a preliminary reading of the MPEG-LA AVC license terms, there is no charge for the codec for non-commercial software.

But is that relevant? I think it's perfectly reasonable for W3C to treat video codecs as a black box, just as they do with network protocols and many other things. So what if W3C can't develop video codec standards? That's no loss; it's not their area of expertise anyway. I don't think it's IETF's area of expertise either, though writing a specification for the wire format is probably something they can handle.

An interesting take on the 2 organisations I'd suggest are most relevant and clearly (thus far) most successful in recommending and developing standards applicable to our current topic, which is web video. I'm a little confused as to why you bring up specifying wire formats as something they "can handle" in relation to the organisation clearly responsible for co-ordination and development of the largest and most successful communications system on the planet. Or suggest they can't or would have to come up with standards from within, was this the case with png? what is the IETF's RFC system about?

I asked why choice in a web video format is, or should be, different from the various standards we commonly employ successfully on the web.

DrPizza wrote:

The fact that IETF and W3C can't develop or improve video standards is not a consequence of patents--ISO MPEG and ITU both manage to do it just fine, after all. It's a consequence of their different expertise.

Many useful standards have Indeed been achieved through those organisations, in terms of internet and web specific standards I believe after several years ISO approved the (donated royalty free to W3C) PNG image format. Although I really didn't ask about your perception of the ability of these organisations whose members number in the thousands to develop video standards.

stewski wrote:

I don't care about "the inventor of the Web". He's not putting a case on these message boards. Similarly whatever arguments they make on their Web sites; I'm not going to argue against a Web page. You're making the case, it is up to you to defend it.

I'm not asking you to argue against a web page, I'm asking you why unlike the numerous successful web and internet standards of the past, it is preferable (in the case of video) to effectively ignore the successful positions of the 2 coordinating bodies?

You went to lengths to ask why IP should matter for formats and standards on the web/internet, I gave you my opinion as to why the W3C and IETF may think they are but I thought it might be helpful to you to go straight to the horses mouth as it were and read what they think. Apparently you are not interested in doing that, presumably because in your opinion:A. Those bodies are incapable of coordinating or advising on video?B. I need to prove the case that web video should be considered similar to other media standards on the web, not the other way around?

stewski wrote:

In what way, I'm trying to follow a rational consideration of how the internet and web have become such useful technologies to mankind, why the bodies involved have avoided licensed proprietary technology and understand why your position is that in the case of video it will "work better" if we don't follow the route those organisations have suggested before?

DrPizza wrote:

Let's just look at that route for a moment, shall we?

H.264, the open-but-royalty-encumbered standard, has a test suite, reference implementation, and extensive documentation. There are dozens, possibly hundreds, of implementations in the wild, and their interoperability is near-perfect. I'm sure there are corner cases where encoder X can produce a perfectly legal and valid bitstream that encoder Y can't handle for one reason or another, but these events are very much the exception, not the rule. The level of real-world interoperability and compatibility is incredible.

HTML and CSS, the open-and-royalty-free specifications, have incomplete test suites, no viable reference implementations, and reasonably extensive documentation. There are perhaps a dozen important implementations (plus god knows how many incomplete/half-assed implementations), and real-world interoperability and compatibility between them is extremely poor. Partly due to vendor incompleteness, partly due to documentation inadequacy, partly due to bugs. They simply don't work the same way, and don't produce the same output.

I only wish that HTML and CSS were adopted as well and as consistently as H.264. The Web would be a much better place for it. But it's simply not the case. The notion that H.264's royalties serve as a serious, meaningful impediment to widespread adoption--highly effective adoption--is simply not true in practice. Even if you wish to restrict the scope to Web video it isn't true, as YouTube, Flash, and iOS demonstrate.

I think their concern about the impact of non-royalty-free standards is entirely hypothetical, and not borne out in practice.

No doubt then, there is a larger more successful network of networks and hyper media system based on the control and coordination of well documented and patented/licensed/proprietary technology that I've not been informed of?

Alternatively, both the W3C and IETF have avoided such technology when guiding the development of the worlds largest and most successful communication system and their methods have proven more successful than that of Novel, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, IBM and to a degree the entire communication industry paradigms and standards that were set before them, arguably because of their avoidance of proprietary formats and protocols by default.

An interesting take on the 2 organisations I'd suggest are most relevant and clearly (thus far) most successful in recommending and developing standards applicable to our current topic, which is web video. I'm a little confused as to why you bring up specifying wire formats as something they "can handle" in relation to the organisation clearly responsible for co-ordination and development of the largest and most successful communications system on the planet. Or suggest they can't or would have to come up with standards from within, was this the case with png? what is the IETF's RFC system about?

Because wire formats are within IETF's remit and expertise. Video codecs are not. PNG didn't come from IETF. PNG came from the PNG working group, and the binary format was then put in an IETF RFC. Do you honestly not understand the difference between "designing a codec" and "writing a document specifying the bitstream"?

Quote:

I asked why choice in a web video format is, or should be, different from the various standards we commonly employ successfully on the web.

It shouldn't. Neither IETF nor W3C developed PNG, nor JPEG, nor GIF, nor WAV/AIFF/RIFF audio, nor MP3. All of these things were developed by subject matter experts, and all of them were developed independently of and separately from IETF and W3C.

Quote:

I'm not asking you to argue against a web page, I'm asking you why unlike the numerous successful web and internet standards of the past, it is preferable (in the case of video) to effectively ignore the successful positions of the 2 coordinating bodies?

Because their positions are irrelevant. Those bodies have no track record in media codecs.

Quote:

A. Those bodies are incapable of coordinating or advising on video?

I don't think the people currently working for those bodies have the relevant expertise to motion video compression, no.

Quote:

B. I need to prove the case that web video should be considered similar to other media standards on the web, not the other way around?

What other media standards emanated from IETF or W3C?

Quote:

No doubt then, there is a larger more successful network of networks and hyper media system based on the control and coordination of well documented and patented/licensed/proprietary technology that I've not been informed of?

We're not talking about networks and hypermedia. We're talking about video codecs.

An interesting take on the 2 organisations I'd suggest are most relevant and clearly (thus far) most successful in recommending and developing standards applicable to our current topic, which is web video. I'm a little confused as to why you bring up specifying wire formats as something they "can handle" in relation to the organisation clearly responsible for co-ordination and development of the largest and most successful communications system on the planet. Or suggest they can't or would have to come up with standards from within, was this the case with png? what is the IETF's RFC system about?

Because wire formats are within IETF's remit and expertise. Video codecs are not. PNG didn't come from IETF. PNG came from the PNG working group, and the binary format was then put in an IETF RFC. Do you honestly not understand the difference between "designing a codec" and "writing a document specifying the bitstream"?

Quote:

I asked why choice in a web video format is, or should be, different from the various standards we commonly employ successfully on the web.

It shouldn't. Neither IETF nor W3C developed PNG, nor JPEG, nor GIF, nor WAV/AIFF/RIFF audio, nor MP3. All of these things were developed by subject matter experts, and all of them were developed independently of and separately from IETF and W3C.

Quote:

I'm not asking you to argue against a web page, I'm asking you why unlike the numerous successful web and internet standards of the past, it is preferable (in the case of video) to effectively ignore the successful positions of the 2 coordinating bodies?

Because their positions are irrelevant. Those bodies have no track record in media codecs.

Quote:

A. Those bodies are incapable of coordinating or advising on video?

I don't think the people currently working for those bodies have the relevant expertise to motion video compression, no.

Quote:

B. I need to prove the case that web video should be considered similar to other media standards on the web, not the other way around?

What other media standards emanated from IETF or W3C?

Quote:

No doubt then, there is a larger more successful network of networks and hyper media system based on the control and coordination of well documented and patented/licensed/proprietary technology that I've not been informed of?

We're not talking about networks and hypermedia. We're talking about video codecs.

Do you feel like you are explaining something to me (about PNG for example), something I don't already know?I find your post amazing, I'm pointing out to you the fallacy of your suggestions about needing to be able to create such standards within the organisation, in the case of the IETF the very point of RFCs is to allow standards and innovation from outside to be discussed and potentially included as Internet Standards.

We are discussing the relative merits of 2 competitive standards in video with regard for their use on the web via the internet and your suggestion seem to preclude the opinions and norms of the 2 largest standards and development bodies.

Where did I say that other media standards emanated from within these organisations?I'm saying these organisation are the primary organisation for governing the development of the web and internet and both prefer to recommend royalty free technology to aid that, what part of that do you deem irrelevant to a discussion on h.264 and WebM exactly?

Or suggest they can't or would have to come up with standards from within, was this the case with png? what is the IETF's RFC system about?

I seriously hope that wasn't the point. I just wasted a minute asking for what it was, too.

Quote:

Do you feel like you are explaining something to me (about PNG for example), something I don't already know?

That's pretty much how every post from you feels like. A statement of the fucking obvious; but then a conclusion founded on nothing.

Is the observable fact that the IETF and W3C have recommended and developed the most successful systems and standards for computer mediated communication (above and beyond those provided via proprietary and/or licensed technologies) founded on nothing?

Why is it you would suggest that development of video encoding technology should be so different to this, why is this model not relevant to web/internet video, especially coming from those who claim to support the development of SVG/HTML et al?

Also note that Jason Garrett-Glaser wrote detailed notes on his analysis of the codec. This is a guy who writes the best encoder on the market and whose first trivial attempt at vp8 outran the entire On2 effect, so I would place some weight on his opinion. The techniques/algorithms are all also public documented, if you are so inclined.

Then we should wait for his (or other with similar credential) opinion on the current WebM/VP8 with the same level of detail? You have to admit, it is not fair to base judgment on VP8 at the point of time when it was just released to the open source community. As far as I am concern, we have no objective data in the matter of H.264/x264 vs WebM/VP8 **now**.

Does sounds like all the argument in this thread and the previous thread are invalid to me if it is done with respect to last year test done on a codec at its infancy stage.

His analysis was at a level that isn't effected by implementation. Its scope was the spec itself.

Also, believing hal on anything is a terrible idea.

Quote:

tzt wrote:

There are fundamental differences in feature sets. Vp8 is basically low level h.264, period. There's no way to change this.

And this VP8 you are writing about. Is it the current VP8 or the last year VP8?

Fundamental spec features do not change. I actually said this already.

Quote:

tzt wrote:

The lay of the landscape is basically this: h.264 is 100% certain to stay in HW. Everybody already pays for it there and nobody is going to drop it and lose compatibility over a few cents when whole dollars of profit are on the line. They designed the codec and now they're using it, it's a done deal.

Google believes that they have a chance at getting vp8 into web video. They do have some cards to play in that regard since they own the largest video sharing site on the web. Note this has nothing to do with "freedom" or such bullshit, it's a power play by Google and as much as some like to cast them as heroes, they're run by agents for shareholders looking out for their own interests just like very other publicly traded company. This fiduciary responsibility from the top is in fact required by law in the US.

What's not really discussed is that competing standards carries with it a burden for all involved, which is the whole point of standardization: reducing costs. Now everyone must either choose one standard and risk losing compatibility or choose all and pay dev/test/storage/whatever costs multiple times. Given that h.264 is already well established, it's a selfish play by Google to place all those costs on everyone else to give themselves a slim chance at establishing dominance. IMO that window's long closed anyway since the days MS tried to do it with VC-1 (for free, btw, and likely none of the suspect types here supported it because they're the type you have to buy off with hollow promises like goog does).

Again, this is a complete rehash of what was already typed endless times from endless angles in the prior thread.

I can understand your frustration with the whole thing. You have passionately describe WebM as something that might consume more battery since *now* hardware are optimized for H.264 more than WebM. In addition to this understood your point of view that the whole exercise derail the standardization process because now there is 2 standard!

But may I suggest that you understand other people frustration with H.264 and whythey might see WebM as a solution or alternative when it come to level of openness (i.e. open standard vs open source or patented with $$$ licensing requirement vs patent unencumbered free for all BSD style).

Part of the understanding is to realize that this is not an ideology or political agenda. People just want to use stuff and do stuff without having to worry about being restricted *IF THERE IS ALTERNATIVE*.

The reality is if you want to play with x264, MPEG-LA frankly doesn't give a shit. All the legal bs is just fearmongering from people who've never done any real work. Technically the license doesn't kick in until 100K user or such (don't quote me on this, but it's in their doc).

Quote:

Sure, you can brand Google as exercising power play and having their own agenda to the tune of shareholders to get profit etc. (As anyone else can brand MPEG-LA, Microsoft, Apple the same).

But if it is just up to Google alone, none of this going to happen. YouTube can use WebM as it is Google prerogative to make it so. But WebM itself is welcomed by the community because it fills a need and it has its own merit. Believe it or not, the merit does not have to be quality or performance. In this case, it is "freedom" (refer to my previous post for my attempt to clarify this such big words!).

Being BSD also implies that the community will have some form of control on the technology and not just everything Google.So, the situation is not as bleak as per your writings above.

As for having 2 competing standard. This is not the first time and will not be the last. Chill and accept it as the fact of life. The competing standard will sort themselves. The beauty is that, at the end of this "sorting" process something better will emerge. Why something better? Because to gain traction it has to be chosen and actively used by the people. Just look at it as a voting process involving everyone Instead of just MPEG-LA, Google, Apple or Microsoft.

That ends my rambling

Again, in reality the only people the license kicks in for is the big boys who can already afford it, it's specifically designed as such.

Or suggest they can't or would have to come up with standards from within, was this the case with png? what is the IETF's RFC system about?

I seriously hope that wasn't the point. I just wasted a minute asking for what it was, too.

Quote:

Do you feel like you are explaining something to me (about PNG for example), something I don't already know?

That's pretty much how every post from you feels like. A statement of the fucking obvious; but then a conclusion founded on nothing.

Is the observable fact that the IETF and W3C have recommended and developed the most successful systems and standards for computer mediated communication (above and beyond those provided via proprietary and/or licensed technologies) founded on nothing?

No, that's the obvious part. It doesn't mean anything without explicit connection to a conclusion, which is how a logical argument works.

Quote:

Why is it you would suggest that development of video encoding technology should be so different to this, why is this model not relevant to web/internet video, especially coming from those who claim to support the development of SVG/HTML et al?

And this is the completely unfounded conclusion. h.264 is an ITU standard, it clearly works fine on various web devices, end of story. Maybe if this were someone else, I'd suggest they try to think through and articulate their ideas to form a more coherent argument, but it's not.

Do you feel like you are explaining something to me (about PNG for example), something I don't already know?

Er, yes, actually. You asked me if it was the case that IETF didn't develop PNG from within. Yes, that is the case--it was developed by the PNG working group. If you knew already, why did you ask?

Quote:

I find your post amazing, I'm pointing out to you the fallacy of your suggestions about needing to be able to create such standards within the organisation, in the case of the IETF the very point of RFCs is to allow standards and innovation from outside to be discussed and potentially included as Internet Standards.

But that is not what IETF uses RFCs for.

Quote:

We are discussing the relative merits of 2 competitive standards in video with regard for their use on the web via the internet and your suggestion seem to preclude the opinions and norms of the 2 largest standards and development bodies.

Because their views are totally irrelevant. We don't need an RFC for the H.264 bitstream. We already have the H.264 specification.

Quote:

I'm saying these organisation are the primary organisation for governing the development of the web and internet and both prefer to recommend royalty free technology to aid that, what part of that do you deem irrelevant to a discussion on h.264 and WebM exactly?

All of it. IETF and W3C's preferences are only relevant to the specifications produced by IETF and W3C. Media codec specifications are not produced by IETF or W3C. So their views are irrelevant.

I don't want to get drawn into a guessing what tzt will do next game, but hey why not:

I say a personal attack on my knowledge/credibility.

Followed by a rambling suggestion that the 2 cases (internet/web standards and video standards) are soooo unrelated as for one model of development to be totally irrelevant to the other.

Followed by some either off topic or historic thread reference.

And finished of with a final Ad Hom revolving around ideology/religion and fanboy-ism of Google.(who clearly no longer "own" WebM in any meaningful sense but hey ho)

I really have no idea WTF you're trying to do at this point. Even if you're trying to waste more time, you're doing a terrible job of it since there's nothing to reply to. Also, submitting an informational RFC to the IETF doesn't mean what you think it does. Shit, even hal knows what that means now.